


(W)hole

by zeldadestry



Category: The Prestige (2006)
Genre: Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-18
Updated: 2010-12-18
Packaged: 2017-10-13 18:20:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/140283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zeldadestry/pseuds/zeldadestry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Reunited.</p>
            </blockquote>





	(W)hole

**Author's Note:**

  * For [feverbeats](https://archiveofourown.org/users/feverbeats/gifts).



Even before you lost your parents, there was a loneliness inside you that threatened to bury you alive. With every person you met you looked deep into their eyes, trying to find the connection you sought, but no one provided even a glimpse.

Now, in your early twenties, you scour the globe, looking - from Madrid to Mumbai, Melbourne to Montreal - for the missing fragment of your self. It has been over a year since you last tried England, and your lungs ache for damp, cool, air, your skin yearns for rain. You leave Cairo for London.

“There’s a man staring at us,” you say to Sarah, your assistant, after you have finished your act and before she travels from stranger to stranger in the assembled crowd, holding out the woven basket and asking for money. “A handsome man, well dressed.” He crosses the street, tips his hat at you, and slips fifty pounds into Sarah’s hand.

“But this is madness,” Sarah says, still gaping, after the last coin has been collected and the audience dispersed. “That man was your exact double! I’ve never seen anything like. Could you possibly, Albert, have been born a twin?”

“And never heard a word of it? Of course not,” you answer. You rest your hands upon her hips, force a laugh and kiss her cheek. “You and your fancies.” Like the best magicians, you have always been good at keeping secrets. Sarah doesn’t know that you were abandoned at as an infant, and without any information as to your family’s identity. The couple who took you in kept you fed and sheltered only until you were thirteen. You call them your parents because it is easier than explaining the truth of how vulnerable and alone you have been during your time in this world. Up until now, your own survival has been your most impressive act. You doubt you would have survived long without your talents to catch the attention of passersby and earn you their spare change.

Tonight, when you look in the mirror you feel pleasure for the first time, not in your own reflection but in the recollection of his. You even approach the glass, press your lips against the smooth surface, pretending. This is what his features would look like, if you leaned in to kiss him, but the expression in his eyes would not be your own, and you yearn to learn the difference.

You predict a sleepless, expectant night, but discover instead, once you settle in your bed, that an invisible hand seems to reach through the dark, touching and marking each part of you as its own.

He finds you again the next day and, though you prayed for his return, though you desired it that much, you had little fear that he would not grace your sight again. He watches your act through three performances, clapping and dropping thick rolls of bills into the basket each time Sarah passes it around, but it is not until your stomach growls and she hurries off to fetch pasties that he joins you.

Rather than face you, he stands beside you, holds you tight by the waist. “I have an estate outside the city,” he says. “I want you to have dinner there tonight.”

“With you?”

“Of course.”

“How far from the city do you live? What time would it be when I get back here?”

“After midnight, I should think.”

“Quite late.”

“Which is why you ought not to leave at all.”

“Spend the night with you, and travel home in the morning?”

“Travel home?” He laughs, lays his head upon your shoulder. “I’ve never had one before now, and neither have you.”

You close your eyes, know without seeing that he has done the same, and return to the womb with him, your perfect brother, your perfect friend, breathing together, hearts beating in one rhythm, until Sarah’s cry of “Hello, again!” tenses his body and pulls him away from you.

“This is dear Sarah, my assistant,” you say.

“Your better half,” Sarah says, “because what would you do without me, yeah?” A bolt of anger surges down your arms, curls your hands into fists, and you stagger back, astonished. What could ever make you want to hurt Sarah? “Albert! Are you ill?”

“No, no, don’t worry,” you tell her.

His hands are on your back and he leaves them there until your vision clears. “Are you alright?” he asks, as though he only trusts the answers you give directly to him.

You look at him, wary and wondering. That wave of feeling was his own. “Are you?”

“When I return to the States,” you explain to him that night, for, having finally found him, you will wait no longer to have him all to yourself, “I wish you to accompany me.”

“I would like that,” he says, “but Sarah depends on the act for her living. What would she do otherwise?”

You master your irritation. Once it is only the two of you, once there is no one to interfere or step between you, he will see how much better it is, and marvel that he could ever have spared a thought for anyone else. “I’m rich. I can leave her with enough money to be free all her life.”

“You would do that for me?”

“Of course, but I would appreciate an allowance from you in return.”

“Anything.”

“You must let me have her, before we go.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You shared your body with her, so now she must share hers with me.”

“Is that necessary?”

“Yes. I will give you everything of mine, without question, without pause or hesitation. I only want to know that you will do the same for me.”

“If she wants you, and I have no doubt she shall, then I have no objections.”

“Good.” You ask for a bottle of champagne and, once it is delivered, order the servants away for the night. You watch as he drinks, wait for his pupils to widen, for a blush across his cheeks, and then you lean over and drag your lips across his brow. His hand rests on your thigh, and you cover it with your own. “Shall I be your pet?” you murmur at his ear. “Shall I be always at your beck and call? Would you like that?”

“Yes.”

“No one can understand us but each other.”

“I know. Always I felt something, someone, missing. I wandered in dreams that were not my own, bore phantom pains and trembled through pleasures without source.”

“Now we can be as we were meant to be.”

His mouth opens desperately beneath yours, sharing your infinite hunger.


End file.
